State of the State: Pop-up edition — how we did it

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon delivered his annual State of the State address on Jan. 20. About a week before, Flash genius Brian Williamson, political editor Christopher Ave and I brainstormed a few ideas to cover the State of the State and the State of the Union for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The biggest, grandest idea we came up with: A pop-up version of the speech, which would include facts and fun.

We were inspired by the Texas Tribune’s Stump interrupted project. But where the Tribune had a month to turn around its pop-up videos, we were trying for 12 hours.

Brian got to work on the behind-the-scenes programming. Christopher recruited top-notch political reporter Tony Messenger and researcher Matt Fernandes to help, and we started putting together a little background information. We knew the governor would be talking about jobs, autism, drunken driving and ethics, and began to put together basic information about each subject and a list of resources to find more information on deadline.

The day of the speech, we had three things working in our favor:
• First, the speech started at 7 p.m., but the text was released to the media two hours earlier. That gave us a jump-start on writing some of those pop-up blurbs.
• Second, night reporter Greg Jonsson was added to the team to help with on-the-spot research and, very important, to count the number of times and ways the governor pronounced the state’s name. (The governor is known for inconsistently pronouncing Missouri. For what it’s worth, my Missouri education says it should be MissourEE.)
• Third, videographer Huy Mach went to Jefferson City to broadcast the speech live on our website, which meant we also had our own video of the speech.

If I’d thought of it earlier, I would have sent a Google Wave invite to everyone on our State of the State team. Still, Brian and I were able to use it to map out pop-ups. (This was the first time I’ve found a good use for Wave. Being able to add the other team members would have made it a great tool.) Brian copied the text of the speech into a new Wave, I added my research, as well as the information from dozens of e-mails from Greg, Tony, Matt and Christopher, where we wanted them to pop up throughout the speech, and I kept building it until there were about 200 pop-ups. That organization helped a lot in the long-run, and helped point out some gaps.

By 11 p.m., Christopher had signed off on our plan and it was up to Brian and I to make it happen. We set out to create each pop-up bubble in Flash. When the 50-minute video arrived (it was delayed by an traffic accident) and compressed, it had to be timed so we knew, for example, when Nixon started talking about education or ethics. And then the timing had to be worked out when each pop-up would appear and how long it would remain visible, and where it would appear on the video. That took the most time.

The speech ended a few minutes before 8 p.m. We posted the first version of the pop-up video a few minutes after 11 a.m., and continued to fill in some gaps and add features (namely the “MissourEE” vs. “MissourAH” counter) for the next three hours.

Looking at it now, there are still a few gaps where pop-ups could be added, mostly toward the end. We had originally planned to add sound effects, but were worried about things getting too busy. Overall, though, it’s pretty remarkable. We’re already talking about other opportunities to roll out this new story-telling tool.